Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements and energy savings in house cooling. More particularly, the present house cooling system uses an existing forced air unit to draw air into the furnace return and exhaust the air into the attic to draw cold air into a house, remove hot air from within the house and push hot air out of the attic. The system uses one or more dampers to redirect the air to the house ducts or the attic.
Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98.
Most houses use either an air conditioning system to cool a house, or attic fan that draws air in from the outside and through the house. In many cases a home owner will operate an air conditioning system while the outside temperature is colder than the air within a house. This results in a waste of electricity. Some homeowners recognize the difference in the temperature and will manually shut off the air conditioning and open windows to cool a house with free cooler outside air. Many others open an attic and use a fan to draw the house air through the attic opening. Some patents have been issued that either operate air conditioning systems, whole house fans, or systems that air condition different rooms at different times of the day. These systems require the house to be built or significantly modified to operate. Exemplary examples of house air conditioning systems are disclosed herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,073 issued Jun. 30, 1987 to Carl Lawrence, U.S. Pat. No. 5,902,183 issued May 11, 1999 to Melanius D'Souza and U.S. Pat. No. 4,986,469 issued Jan. 2, 1981 to James A. Sutton Jr. all disclose an air circulation system that turn on or off fans to move outside air through an enclosure. These fans use inside/outside temperature sensor or time-of-day timers to operate the fans. While these patents disclose an air circulation system that ventilates a building with outside air the systems do not work with forced air unit to achieve energy savings.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,575 issued Mar. 30, 1976 to Russell L. Barr et al and U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,385 issued Oct. 11, 1988 to Arthur C. Dean both disclose a house air conditioning system that opens and closes ducting to use outside air. These patents require the house to be pre-built with the ducts to alter where air is drawn through a building. The use of ducting further eliminates the possibility that outside air can naturally be blown through a building or house without any fans using the wind or thermal vertical movement of air.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,222,494 issued May 29, 2007 to Mark W. Peterson et al discloses an Adaptive Intelligent Circulation Control Methods and Systems. This system also requires a house or building to be constructed with ducting for outside air. The system has a number of sensors located both inside and outside of the house to improve the comfort within the house and reduce energy costs. The system can operate under a user defined program or in random sequence.
What is needed is a system that operates with a pre-constructed house and existing forced air unit. The forced air unit draws air into the furnace return and exhausts the air into the attic to draw cold air into a house, remove hot air from within the house and push hot air out of the attic. The system uses one or more dampers to redirect the air to the house ducts or the attic. The proposed application provides these functions in a system that can be retrofit to operate with an existing forced air unit.